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The next minute her mother’s voice came through. “Hi, darling. You did bring rain boots, right?”
“Yes, Mother, I brought rain boots.” She did know how to read weather reports and pack appropriately.
“So,” Louise said. “What’s it like over there? Have you met any men?”
Ohmyfuckinggod. “Yeah, Mom, I went to Inishmore’s weekly speed-dating session last night,” Cordelia joked. She didn’t want to fight. But why couldn’t her mother simply respect her wishes and stop freaking asking about guys?
“Really?” Louise sounded painfully excited.
“No, not really. Jesus, Mom, there aren’t that many people here. They don’t do speed dating.”
“Now see, this is what I was worried about,” Louise said. “Mary Ellen was telling me, if you’d gone to London, or maybe even Paris, there would be so many more suitable people your age to make friends with.”
“Suitable people? This isn’t a Regency romance novel. I’m not here to snag myself a man from a reputable family.”
“Well, there’s always the apps,” her mother continued. “Mary Ellen’s daughter met her fiancé on an app called Summr of Luv. But that’s Summer without an E, so when you look it up don’t use the E! You girls today are so lucky, there’s so many ways to meet someone. And you know, Cordie, you are going to be thirty next year.”
“Yes, Mom,” Cordelia said through gritted teeth. “I am aware.”
“Are you done?” Niall appeared at her elbow, his expression as grim as ever.
“Sorry?” Cordelia said as her mother cried, “Who’s that, he sounds handsome!”
“Hold on a second, Mom,” Cordelia hissed. She covered her phone with one hand and said, “I’m sorry, what?”
Niall jerked his chin at her plate. “Are you done with the salad?”
“Oh. Yes.” She wasn’t, actually, but she didn’t want him coming back to the table. What had happened to Shauna? Niall swooped the plate away and strode off to the kitchen. Even his back looks angry, Cordelia thought, her eyes tracing the hard set of his shoulders as she put the phone up to her ear.
“Before you say anything else, Mom, that was the bartender,” she warned. “I’m out having lunch.”
“He still sounded handsome. And what’s wrong with dating a bartender? At least he’s got a job. That Sam, he was always mooching off of you.”
“Yeah, there were a lot of problems with Sam,” Cordelia said with a sigh.
She hadn’t dated anyone since her dad died, and the two boyfriends before that had been … less than great. Sam, the unemployed former hedge fund manager, had refused to acknowledge they were actually, you know, in a relationship. Which, she supposed, was better than Luke, the boyfriend before, who had constantly leaned on her for emotional support while never making time to listen to her own worries, or come to her shows, or even take more than a brief glance at her photos. All he wanted was to bitch about his office job and force her to sit through boring indie movies.
“I’m only saying,” Louise said, “a whole summer away from home … something good has to come out of that, right?”
Cordelia’s nostrils flared. “Mom, finding a man does not equal something good. I can find something good all on my own. I’m not here to catch myself an Irish husband.”
“I only mean you’ve been so sad since your father died … I think you’d feel a bit better if you had someone special in your life.”
“That’s how you deal with things, Mom,” Cordelia snapped. “Not me.” She heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath and said, “Look, I gotta go, I’ll talk to you later.”
She hung up before her mother could say anything else.
By the time she left, it had started to rain.
6
When Sunday finally rolled around, Cordelia was extremely grateful for Fiona’s offer of dinner.
She had been on Inishmore only one week and the homesickness was killing her. It might have been easier to bear if she had a camera, but her new one had been delayed in shipping. She hadn’t gone back to O’Connor’s since that lunch, and though she hadn’t planned on actually going to the seisiún Colin had invited her to this coming Friday, now she was desperate for it. She needed a night out. Hell, she needed human interaction. The mysterious Róisín was still never home, or if she was, she never answered the door when Cordelia knocked. It was getting hard not to take it personally.
She was beginning to wonder if Róisín actually existed.
And then there was the rain. Inishmore had more kinds of rain than it knew what to do with: hard lashing rain and soft misting rain and big fat drops of rain that slipped down the neck of her jacket if her hood blew off in the wind. It rained during the day and it rained at night. And in the brief moments it wasn’t raining, the air was so heavy with dew that it felt like it was raining then too.
